Traffic growth in Kazakhstan has slowed significantly due to a sluggish economy and currency depreciation impacting local demand. Passenger traffic in Kazakhstan increased by only 1% in 2016 and the market would have contracted if it were not for a significant increase in transit traffic at flag carrier Air Astana, CAPA Centre for Aviation writes.

Kazakhstan aviation authorities expect another year of anaemic growth in 2017 despite a surge in visitor numbers anticipated for EXPO 2017, which will take place this summer at the capital Astana. The Astana Airport is opening a new international terminal just ahead of EXPO, which will enable Air Astana to pursue further growth in transit traffic in the coming years.

Sixth freedom traffic, which accounted for approximately 10% of total international traffic in Kazakhstan in 2016 compared to only 5% in 2015, could drive a new phase of growth for Air Astana and the Kazakhstan market overall. Proceeds from Air Astana’s planned initial public offering (IPO) could be used to accelerate fleet and network expansion with a focus on transit traffic but the airline will have to overcome relatively challenging market conditions, including intensifying competition from both local and foreign airlines.

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FUGITIVE LONG-FINGERED GENTRY FROM THE PLAINSThe story of Mukhtar Ablyazov, one-time major shareholder and chief executive of Kazakhstan’s BTA bank, tells how well over 10 billion US dollar is supposed to have been reaped through his network of close to 800 fake companies.

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Charles van der Leeuw, writer, news analyst, was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1952. He started working as an independent reporter on cultural issues in a wide variety of publications back in 1977. Ten years later, he settled down in war-torn Beirut as an international war correspondent, following a first experience in Iraq in 1985, which resulted in his first book on the Iraq-Iran war. After his kidnapping and release in 1989, his second book “Lebanon – the injured innocence” came out, followed, in early 1992, by “Kuwait burns”. Later in the year, he settled down in Baku, Azerbaijan, as a war correspondent. “Storm over the Caucasus” on the southern Caucasus geopolitical conflicts came out in 1997 in the Dutch language and two years later in the first English edition. It was followed by “Azerbaijan – a quest for identity” and “Oil and gas in the Caucasus and Caspian – a history”, both published in 2000, and “Black & Blue” published in Almaty in summer 2003 about the stormy rise of Russia’s present-day oil and gas companies.
In 2012, he published a bipartite book about the histories of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. His latest publication before this work was “Cold War II: cries in the desert – or how to counterbalance NATO’s propaganda from Ukraine to Central Asia”, published by Herfordshire Press, England, along with books similar to this one on Kyrgyzstan, published in English, French and German editions.